Placement Support of Learners in Learning Networks

Abstract

The relevance of courses for individuals depends to a large extent on the prior knowledge they have. Especially in adult education learners only want to spend time on learning activities which helps them to reach their competence development goals without repetition of things they already know. The process of giving a learner an individual position in the curriculum is called a placement process. Traditionally this placement is done based on a process called Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL). In this procedure learners apply for placement with an individual collection of products from their prior education and work context. Domain experts study these portfolios and the results of the process is an individualized curriculum. But this process is very time-consuming and expensive. During the PhD project new methods to support this process are explored. The main focus of the project lies on the application of latent semantic analysis for prior knowledge estimation. In addition, as a more structured approach like concept mapping is used as a proxy for prior knowledge. In general the project focuses solely on bottom-up methods which do not rely on maintenance or predefined ontologies.